I
recently read an article about the Scion FR-S and Subaru BRZ. This wasn't hard to do. Over the past year, virtually every
automotive article has been about the Scion FR-S and Subaru BRZ, including ones
that were about other cars. "The completely redesigned Mercedes S-Class
boasts entirely new styling and features," Autoblog might write, for
instance. "But it still isn't as cool as the Scion FR-S and Subaru BRZ."

And
that's part of the reason I was so surprised by the article I read. For once, it wasn't a story about how great
the FR-S and BRZ are, or how well they handle, or how they're the automotive
equivalent of God, which is the kind of thing that FR-S and BRZ owners say at
Cars and Coffee. ("I stopped going to
church after I got this car, man. Now, check out my Android phone.")

Instead,
it was a piece about how sales haven't been good enough to justify a version
with more horsepower. Some Toyota
executive said this, presumably after a rather long, mind-altering acid trip.

Of course you remember the Scion FR-S. It and its Subaru BRZ twin were all we were talking about in …
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I have
my reasons for taking this position, but first I'm going to provide some
background. Background is important for people like my girlfriend, who
occasionally reads my columns but knows nothing about cars. "What
is Scion?" she'll ask, for example. "Some
kind of laundry detergent?"

In
terms of the FR-S and BRZ, the background is this: both cars came out for the
2013 model year to an insane amount of fanfare.
Dealers were charging over sticker.
People were paying it. Guys would go online and brag about how they
had the first one in their area. I once
saw an FR-S in a parking lot, and I made the mistake of saying – within earshot
of the owner – that I couldn't tell apart the FR-S and BRZ. The next five minutes of my life were spent
going over every individual detail until
– oh, wait, do you feel that? … oh, I
think it's my phone vibrating … oh, shoot! It's my mom! Gotta take this! Nice talking to you, though!

It was
that kind of car.

And
yet, there was always this lingering problem.
Now, I know we have some FR-S and BRZ owners here on Jalopnik, and
certainly many FR-S and BRZ appreciaters,
so I'm going to be very delicate with this.
The problem was that the FR-S and BRZ are kind of… underpowered. What I mean
here is that they're not as fast as other sports cars, but they're faster than,
say, the Jeep Patriot.

But
here's the thing: this didn't seem to stop people from buying them. The FR-S and BRZ quickly became some of the
fastest-selling cars of 2012. They were
flying off the shelves. They were going
like hotcakes. They were selling so
quickly that automotive journalists were struggling to come up with metaphors
to describe the situation. And most importantly: they were bringing people into
Scion showrooms, real people, and not
just Toyota customers looking for an unoccupied bathroom stall.

But
it's been two years, and that means sales are finally starting to slow
down. That, ladies and gentlemen, is
totally normal. The early adopters
already have their FR-S or BRZ, and
they're currently bragging about it to uninterested co-workers. ("The engine is technically in the
middle. It's like a Porsche. But it's way more reliable. And cheaper.
Sometimes I call it the Porsche.
When I'm waxing it. Hey, where are you going?! I haven't told you about
the flat engine yet!")

And the
rest of us? We're waiting for a version
with more horsepower.

To be
honest, I thought this was the strategy all along: release the slow one first
and the fast one later. I say this
because the same strategy has been used by every
single automaker in the history of time. For instance: when Porsche comes out with a
new 911, they release the regular one first, and then, two or three years down
the line, they roll out the Turbo. It's
the same strategy BMW uses with the M3, Audi uses with the S4, and Ferrari uses
with "Scuderia" or "Speciale" versions of its sports cars. That way, you can sell two cars: one to the
guy who just has to have the newest version, and then another one a few years
later, when that very same guy decides he wants a few more horses under the
hood.

What these
brands don't do is go out in public and complain about how sales aren't strong
enough to justify a performance version.
Instead, they've been engineering the performance version all along. And then, just when sales of the normal model
are starting to taper off, just when people are losing interest, WHAM! The performance version goes on sale, and
suddenly you've pissed off everyone who just bought the regular model.

So my
suggestion to you, overlords of the Toyobaru, is simple: if sales are starting
to die down, now's the time to give us the performance version. In turn, I think I speak for all of my auto
journalist colleagues when I say that we will continue to mention the car in
every article we write. As an example,
here's a good lede I have saved up: Mitsubishi
announced today that it is finally leaving the US market, citing increased
regulation, stiff competition, and the fact that they don't make a Scion FR-S competitor.

Perfect,
right? OK, Toyota and Subaru: now it's
your turn.

@DougDeMuro is
the author of Plays With Cars.
He owned an E63 AMG wagon and once tried to evade police at the Tail of the
Dragon using a pontoon boat. (It didn't work.) He worked as a manager for
Porsche Cars North America before quitting to become a writer, largely because
it meant he no longer had to wear pants. Also, he wrote this entire bio himself
in the third person.